Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, June 11, 2018

The Metaphoric Kite (Noah Phillips)

RISING UP: The Metaphoric Kite

Hamas’ riling up the masses and ‘populist warfare’ tactics are a concerted effort to provoke Israeli retaliation. These tactics are not novel by any means, nor are their espousal of terrorism and advocacy for the destruction of Israel by way of bombings, rockets, and lethal intifadas. However, the recent use of incendiary kites deployed from Gaza by the thousands into Israel is especially disconcerting for its symbolic and violent outcomes.

What are kites but symbols of youth and innocence, emblems of playfulness and wonder for children? But leave it to Hamas to pervert a toy and joyful experience for youth. As the kites are transformed from toys to tools of chaos, so too are the children of Gaza ideologically weaponized from birth. Gazan youth learn unconditional hate for Jews and Israel and are raised under the thumb of a militarized and an internationally-recognized terror group.

Hamas methodically perpetuates hate from one generation to the next by indoctrinating children with deplorable idioms and sanctioning violence as honorable. They’ve bred the next generation of civilian shields and terrorists instead of preparing a skilled and educated population of future leaders.

Of course, not all Gazans and certainly not all children follow Hamas’ path. But Hamas is so hell-bent on Israel’s extinction that it deprives children of innocent play and weaponizes what should be their toys to serve further destruction.

The kites are dually symbolic not solely of Hamas’ imparted ideology on their kids, but of Hamas’ irresponsible handling and appropriation of international aid to Gaza. Donated by Japan specifically for the impoverished children of Gaza, Hamas and Hamas-followers weaponized the toys to launch a barrage of flying incendiary devices against Israel.

While the kites were a relatively mundane gift from Japan, they are indicative of the much larger and more substantial trend of misappropriation of funds by Hamas.

“Hamas allocates 55% of its budget to fund its military needs and its share in the rehabilitation of Gaza is less than 5% of the total investment. In addition to its disproportionately large military budget, Hamas also diverts aid money to fund its military ventures,” per the IDF. This is in spite of “80% (of the Gaza population) are dependent on international aid.”

According to Major General Yoav Mordechai, "The egotistical Hamas terror organization has robbed funds that are meant for the needy of Gaza from international organizations. Hamas prospers at the expense of the residents of the Strip and uses donations meant for them to finance terror. How long will the world and the Gazan people ignore this?”

And his posed question is certainly valid, considering the perpetual allocation of funds by Hamas towards arms accumulation and expanding their frightening military capabilities.

So the metaphoric kite represents Hamas’ operations: Like a kite looms above, Hamas persists as an ongoing threat to the State of Israel and the state of Western democracy in the Middle East. The kite will inevitably fall, to be sure, but when that kite is outfitted with incendiaries, it menaces Israeli civilians and distances further any promise or hope of peace.

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06/11 Links Pt1: Gaza—The “humanitarian” hoax; How to beat Hamas' guerrilla terrorism; Germany's Migrant Rape Crisis: "Failure of the State"

From Ian:

Martin Sherman: Gaza—The “humanitarian” hoax

The privation in Gaza is not the cause of the enmity towards the Jewish state. Quite the opposite! It is the enmity towards the Jewish state that is the cause of the privation in Gaza.

No cliché has dominated the discourse on the Gaza situation more than the perception of Palestinian violence as a corollary of the Strip’s dire economic condition – Prof. Efraim Karsh, It's Not Gaza's Economy, Stupid, June 3, 2018.

Many experts claim that an easing of economic conditions in Gaza…is the way to achieve political stability in a Gaza Strip ruled by Hamas. This is a fallacious argument. Prof. Hillel Frisch, Economic Benefits Will Not Bring Stability to Gaza , June 6, 2018.

It is refreshing to see what appears to be an emerging challenge to the mindless Pavlovian response, propagated by most of the Israeli media, to the horrific hatred and violence on display along the border with Gaza.

Soldiers turned sociologists?
Sadly, and perhaps, most disturbingly, it is none other than the IDF and the security establishment that appear to be one of its principal advocates.

Reflecting this hopelessly unfounded perspective was a recent report, headlined, “Israeli military recommends easing humanitarian situation in Gaza”, which cited a senior military source advising that “Israel should ease the humanitarian situation in Gaza and reach a long term ‘arrangement’ with Hamas”. A day later, this was followed by a similar report,” Army calls to lift some economic restrictions on Gaza, boost chances of quiet”, citing “A top official in the IDF’s Southern Command [who stated that ] Israel must take steps to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which would likely bring quiet to the Gaza region.”

Bill to punish Palestinians for pay-for-slay scheme heads to final vote

A bill meant to discourage the Palestinian Authority from continuing to pay terrorists can go to a final vote, after the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee authorized it on Monday.

The legislation requires the government to deduct the amount that the Palestinian Authority pays terrorists from the taxes and tariffs Israel collects for the PA, and is backed by MKs from the coalition and much of the opposition.

The PA paid terrorists over a billion shekels ($280 million) in 2017, upping the amount to over NIS 1.4 billion ($390 million) in its 2018 budget, according to a Defense Ministry report based on the PA’s budget.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the bill’s passage, and said it will be used to pay damages for fields destroyed by Gazans launching incendiary kites into Israel. “Justice should be done here. Whoever burns fields should know it has a price.”

“This bill fixes a historic injustice,” according to Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern, who proposed the legislation. “This is a bill that will reduce terrorism.”

PMW: Far-reaching PMW achievement in Israeli Parliament today

Today the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) Committee on Foreign Affairs and Security voted unanimously to deduct the amount that the PA pays to terrorist prisoners and terrorists' families from the tax money that Israel collects and transfers to the PA each month. The amount, according to the 2018 PA budget, is approximately 1.2 billion shekels per year (approx. $350 million).

The legislation adds that the withheld money will be put into a special account which will be used to compensate victims of terror and their families, as well as to compensate Israelis for economic damage caused by Palestinian terror, and other uses.

Since the vote was supported by all the Knesset members present, both of the coalition and opposition, the legislation is expected to pass the second and third readings in the Knesset shortly and be enacted into law.

Palestinian Media Watch has been working with the Knesset committee in all of its deliberations about this legislation. On November 13, 2017, PMW was invited and made a PowerPoint presentation to the committee introducing the Knesset committee to the topic of Palestinian rewards to terrorists.

PMW showed the Knesset the history and scope of the PA practice:
The amount the PA spends on terror rewards;
Proof that these rewards motivated terror attacks;
Proof that at least part of the money Israel transferred was reaching terrorists in prison; and much more.

Subsequently, the Ministry of Defense announced that the Israeli government would like to initiate its own version of the legislation. Representatives of the Ministry of Defense turned to PMW and met with us numerous times for information detailing the practice and its scope.

PMW was invited to the four subsequent meetings in the Knesset Committee in 2018, (January 9, February 12, May 15, and today), and played an active role in all the meetings.

The official spokesman of Fatah movement and member of its Revolutionary Council, Osama al-Qawasmi, said that the law passed by the Knesset, which authorizes the Israeli government to withhold tax revenues of the amount the PA pays the families of "martyrs" and prisoners, is "piracy" and "theft" and "violates all international conventions."

Because paying terrorists and their families is protected under international law.

Just so you know.

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Syrians approaching the Israeli border in 2011

The current "Great Return March" is not the first attempt by Palestinians to "return" to Israel by pretending to peacefully march through the Israeli borders.

In 2011, there were two sets of similar demonstrations or attempts, in May and June for Nakba Day and Naksa Day. Arabs of Palestinian descent attempted to walk into Israel from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, as well as Gaza and the West Bank.

In most cases, the demonstrators were not stopped by Israel, but by the police and armies of the host countries and territories - often violently.

On May 15, the Lebanese army fired at the demonstrators, killing 10 of them.

The Egyptian army stopped any buses with demonstrators before they could approach the border, and in Jordan dozens were injured as the Jordanian security forces stopped the demonstrators from approaching the border with Israel.

If these were peaceful protests, then why would the host countries be willing to use violence to stop its own citizens from approaching Israeli territory?

The reason is that everyone knows that crossing a border without permission is an act of war, not an act of protest. The countries wanted to avoid the possibility of starting a war with Israel (with the exception of Syria, which facilitated the demonstrations in order to distract the world from the beginnings of the Syrian uprising.)

During the June 5 demonstrations, even Hamas stopped the protesters from approaching the Gaza border by putting up checkpoints and arresting those who tried to bypass them.

At the time, the US issued a statement saying the obvious truth: "We call for all sides to exercise restraint. Provocative actions like this should be avoided. Israel, like any sovereign nation, has a right to defend itself."

What was so obvious in 2011, that attempts to breach a border are acts of war that can be expected to be met with deadly force, has suddenly become controversial in 2018.

It is also notable that Israel used the exact same methods to stop the protesters in 2018 as in 2011: warning them, using tear gas, and shooting at their legs when the other methods didn't work. There were no condemnations from the international community then, and as we've seen even Lebanon and Jordan and Egypt - and Hamas - attempted to stop the protests, with violence if necessary.

The international reaction to the current wave of violent riots is the height of hypocrisy.

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Last week, Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah gave one of his regular speeches where he opines on a wide range of topics.

In this speech, he claimed that Arab Gulf countries were acting as intermediaries for Jews who want to buy houses from Arabs in Jerusalem. The Arabs would not sell directly to Jews for fear of being attacked or killed, but they sell to Gulf Arabs who then turn around and resell them to their Jewish clients, from the safety of their homes thousands of miles away.

Nasrallah says that the owner of a house near the Temple Mount was offered $20 million from an Arab intermediary, who meant to sell it to Jews.

An article in an Arabic news site yesterday specifically accused a UAE businessman of being an intermediary for exactly such transactions. With fairly thin circumstantial evidence, the article claims that some Arabs with Israeli citizenship as well as Mahmoud Abbas rival Mohammed Dahlan are helping facilitate shell companies in the UAE buy land and houses from Arabs in Jerusalem. Dahlan vehemently denied the charges on Facebook.

Even so, the article claims that these transactions are happening, and says that at the current rate of Jewish purchase of these properties, the majority of the properties around the perimeter of the Temple Mount will be owned by Jews within five years.

So far, no international human rights group has spoken out against the idea that Arabs should be threatened rather than be allowed to sell property to Jews. After all, why should pure antisemitism and death threats to property sellers be a subject for human rights groups to bother about?

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Indonesian leader of 50 million Muslims visits Israel to address American Jewish Committee forum

The Arabic media, already reeling over the visit of a delegation of Moroccans to Israel this week, now has another headache to deal with.

Yahya Cholil Staquf, General Secretary of the world's largest Muslim organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Supreme Council, will address the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Global Forum in Jerusalem this week.

Pak Yahya has inspired many in Indonesia and elsewhere with his work that promotes understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims, and underlines a tolerant, moderate vision of Islam. The organization he heads has over 50 million members and 14,000 madrasahs in Indonesia, the fourth-largest country in the world and the country with the world's largest Muslim population. They adhere to Sunni Islam traditions that teach that the primary message of Islam is universal love and compassion.

It would be tough for Muslims to say that the leader of 50 million of them is a traitor.

It would be very tough for BDS to threaten the leader of 50 million Muslims.

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Sometimes you can find the best stories only in Arabic media.

Palestine Today reports that a delegation of Moroccans began a visit to Israel today. The visit will last several days.

It will include a visit to the Knesset including the visit, which will last several days a visit to the Knesset and a field tour of Jerusalem, a visit to the centers and museums including the Yad Vashem and some universities.

The delegation includes 11 people, including engineers, writers, directors and businessmen, who see the importance of dialogue and communication with their counterparts in Israel.

Delegates are also scheduled to visit Islamic holy sites.

These sorts of things are barely a blip on Israelis' radar, but Arabic sites know that this sort of thing is the reality, and the Argentina soccer fiasco is the exception that proves the rule. The Arab world is moving closer to Israel and no longer subscribes to the zero-sum reality of Palestinians that says that taking advantage of what Israel has to offer hurts Palestinians.

In fact, Morocco also set up a field hospital in Gaza in recent days.

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06/10 Links: Greenblatt: After four decades of Erekat, Palestinians deserve better; Giuliani: The PA is “not entitled to be a state”; Netanyahu bypasses the Ayatollahs - offers water tech to Iranians

From Ian:

Greenblatt: After four decades of Erekat, Palestinians deserve better

It is time for the Palestinians to be served by leaders other than Saeb Erekat, who for the last 40 years has voiced the same talking points and failed to deliver “anything close” to what the Palestinians want, US Mideast negotiator Jason Greenblatt wrote in an op-ed on Sunday.

Greenblatt, who on a number of occasions has been the target of Erekat’s angry rhetorical fusillades, took to the offensive in a Haaretz piece headlined, “Trump Mideast envoy: The Palestinians deserve so much more than Saeb Erekat.”
“Dr. Erekat – we have heard your voice for decades and it has not achieved anything close to Palestinian aspirations or anything close to a comprehensive peace agreement,” Greenblatt wrote. “Other Palestinian perspectives might help us finally achieve a comprehensive peace agreement where Palestinian and Israeli lives can be better.

“The time for leadership and responsibility is now,” he said. “The time for meeting after meeting of government officials repeating the same talking points is over. The Palestinian people want real action, and they need honest, realistic and decisive solutions.”

Greenblatt wrote that notions that Israel is going away, or that Jerusalem is not the country’s capital, or that the United States is not a critical interlocutor for Mideast peace are all simply “mirages.”

“The reality is that there is an opportunity for peace at hand, and that President Trump and his administration are working to help facilitate a peace that will open up the future of the Palestinian people, if they and their leadership have the courage to seize it,” he concluded.

The trigger for the piece was an article Erekat wrote on May 17, following the move of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the most violent day of rioting along the Gaza security fence, when 62 Palestinians were killed.

Erekat accused the US of “moral bankruptcy and complicity with Israel,” and accused Greenblatt and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman of becoming “nothing less than spokespeople for the Israeli occupation.”

Rudy Giuliani to PMW: The PA is “not entitled to be a state”

Palestinian Media Watch met with Rudy Giuliani, US President Donald Trump's lawyer, on Wednesday, and documented to him the many ways that the PA glorifies terror and terrorists.

PMW’s Director Itamar Marcus and head of Legal Strategies Maurice Hirsch showed the former mayor of New York City PMW’s reports on the PA's payment of salaries to terrorist prisoners, 31 PA schools named after terrorists as well as texts presenting terrorists as role models from PA schoolbooks.

Giuliani’s response was that these activities show the PA to be a “murder machine.” The PA’s response to terror including financial support and honor for terrorists makes them “a prime supporter of terrorism.”

Most significantly, Giuliani concluded that because of the PA’s terror support they are “therefore not entitled to be a state.”

In his statement to PMW, Giuliani focused on the PA’s policy of paying salaries to terrorists:
“The payment of money by the Palestinian Authority to terrorists who are convicted of terrorism is an absolute human rights outrage and a crime in and of itself. To give money to people who slaughter innocent human beings, including children and women and innocent people of all kinds, is a direct contribution to terrorism... The fact that the Palestinian Authority does this, carries this out on a massive scale, is yet another indication that the Palestinian Authority is a prime supporter of terrorism, and therefore not entitled to be a state.” [Giuliani recorded statement to PMW, June 6, 2018]

Giuliani believes that countries must cut off all funding to Palestinian Authority:
“The United States, for example, should not give the Palestinian Authority any money, and not just restrict the use of money, because money is fungible. So if they get money for one purpose, they just don’t use it for that purpose and they move it over to paying terrorists for killing Americans, because many of these terrorists have killed Americans as well as Israelis.”

Rudy Giuliani: The PA is a “murder machine” and “not entitled to be a state”

The New York Times had an article on Friday by Michael David Lukas, a writer who spent a lot of time looking at ancient Jewish cemeteries mostly in Muslim countries like Tunisia and Egypt.

He ends off the article this way:

It might be difficult to find the traces of Jewish history in Kolkata or Cairo or Baghdad or Fez. And it might be difficult to imagine that now-vanished world in which Jewish bakers lived side by side with Muslim doctors, Armenian tailors and Zoroastrian jewelers.

But that’s all the more reason to search out those places. In visiting these semi-abandoned cemeteries and synagogues, in seeking out the remnants of this mostly forgotten past, I’ve tried, in my own small way, to pay my respects to the dead and to remember that lost world in which they lived.

Not once in the article is the reader given any context as to why the Jews who had lived in these places for so long suddenly disappeared.

The taboo of mentioning the obvious fact of Muslim antisemitism - especially after Israel was reborn, but also throughout history - is simply too strong.

Instead of being ethnically cleansed, the Jews who attended these synagogues just magically disappeared.

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The Palestinian foreign ministry issued a statement warning about how Israel is lying to the world about any Jewish history in Jerusalem.

"This campaign includes various fields and areas, whether diplomatic, sports or cultural, and it uses any excuse to pass on its lies and its Judaic narrative about the Holy City and its many historical sites," the ministry said in a statement.

It warned that Israel is bringing international visitors to visit "occupied Jerusalem with an infusion of fabricated information and the falsification of the facts about occupation."

In a sane world, every enlightened nation that knows a modicum of history would condemn these antisemitic statements that deny Jewish history. But in the world we live in, a putative "nation" can spout out any lies it wants without any fear of a real nation (or major media outlet) standing up to it and saying that as long as the PA denies reality, it cannot expect and does not deserve any respect.

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From News.com.au:

A STUDENT newspaper in Sydney has been slammed for featuring a female suicide bomber who killed dozens of Israeli soldiers on its front page.

Honi Soit, which is produced by the University of Sydney’s student women’s collective, printed a large picture of Hamida al-Taher with a rifle in her hand on the cover of its women’s edition.

The issue, printed a fortnight ago, was dedicated to the struggle against “Israeli colonisation” and labelled al-Taher — who killed more than 50 people when she blew herself up in a notorious attack Southern Lebanon in 1985 — a “martyr”.

The pro-Palestine activist was a member of Syria’s Arab Socialist Ba’ath party.

Now, the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) has hit back at the newspaper and called for a public apology over the front cover, and another front cover on April 16 which depicted a lit petrol bomb alongside words supporting a boycott of Israel.

“These editions of Honi Soit display a blatant disdain for Israeli victims of violence, an attitude that has left Jewish students feeling deeply alienated,” AUJS said in a statement.

“This attitude has no place at this university … AUJS calls on the teams who produced the special editions to issue a public apology and affirm their commitment to nonviolent paths to peace.”

The AUJS added the front pages were “deliberately alluding to and endorsing violence as a legitimate form of protest”. The organisation said it had raised a complaint with the University of Sydney.

However, Women’s officers Madeline Ward and Jessica Syed, who produced the al-Tahir cover, defended their actions in an online Honi Soit article.

“We were aware that Hamida al-Taher car-bombed an Israeli military encampment … (but) her actions occurred in the context of the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, i.e.: a war,” they wrote.

“We believe in and support the right for people to resist occupation and oppression, and that Hamida’s actions are far less shocking than the fact Israel murdered over 58 peaceful Palestinian protesters, the youngest of which being an eight-month-old baby.”

The newspaper’s president Imogen Grant reacted by saying AUJS was trying to stifle free speech. Meanwhile, Jazzlyn Breen and Ray Prout, titled “Queer officers” at the student women’s collective, defended their molotov cocktail cover graphic, adding that AUJS took it the wrong way.

“The molotov cocktail was very obviously in relation to the violent history of the queer liberation movement against the continued oppression which has targeted queer identifying people throughout modern history,” they said in a combined statement for Honi Soit.

Campuses are getting worse and worse.

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06/09 Links: Iran Admits To Facilitating 9/11 Terror Attacks; Does Mueller have an Israel problem?; Virulent anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan loses his blue check; Kate Upton poses in Israel for Maxim's Hot 100

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Reframing the Middle East narrative my ten-point guide

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that those trying to defend Israel in the court of public opinion needed a strategic rethink.

Defending Israel against the calumnies being thrown at it is to concede defeat from the start by engaging upon ground defined by its enemies. Instead, Israel’s defenders need to go onto the front foot. They need to do to its enemies what is done to Israel: to paint them as extreme, unconscionable and a mortal threat to life and liberty. But with one key difference: that whereas Israel’s enemies do this through lies, bigotry and irrationality, its defenders should do it through truth, morality and reason.

They should do it by repeated use of high-level speeches, press conferences, videos and other platforms to take the attack to the enemy: proactively and aggressively to destroy the premises on which they base their attacks by redefining who is truly victim and victimiser in the Middle East; reclaiming the language from those who have hijacked it and inverted its meaning in order to twist the western mind; and proactively and aggressively to attack named governments and politicians, media, intellectuals and others for supporting the “Palestinians”’ unconscionable agenda, using their own values to hold their feet to the fire.

Here’s my handy, cut-out-and-keep ten-point guide to the essential messages that need to be got across by proactive, aggressive and repeatedly reinforced initiatives in order to reframe the narrative.

- Support indigenous people. The Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. While many others have lived there over the centuries, the Jews are the only people – as a people – for whom it was ever their national kingdom, and the only people still around today who had their homeland there taken away from them by force.
- Stop Arab colonialism. Historically, Arabs and Muslims were colonial invaders who occupied the land of Israel by force. The “Palestinians” are Arab colonialists who aim once again to occupy the land and wipe out the indigenous inhabitants, the Jewish people, from their own homeland.
- End the lie of Palestinian identity. There never was a Palestinian people. Palestine was the insulting name given to Judea by the Romans. The Arabs living there at the time of the Balfour Declaration identified themselves mainly as southern Syrians or else just as Arabs. Palestinian identity was invented solely to rewrite history and destroy the Jewish claim to the land of Israel. Anyone who supports the Palestinian cause is therefore an accessory to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish right of national self-determination.
- Denounce anti-Zionism as anti-Judaism. The Jews are a nation. Many fail to realise that because they think Judaism is merely a religion. The essence of Judaism, however, is the religious obligations of the Jewish nation within the land of Israel which is sanctified to that purpose. Denying the Jewish nation its own land is therefore a direct assault on Judaism itself.

Iran Admits To Facilitating 9/11 Terror Attacks

Iranian officials, in a first, have admitted to facilitating the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. by secretly aiding the free travel of al Qaeda operatives who eventually went on to fly commercial airliners into the Twin Towers in New York City, according to new remarks from a senior Iranian official.

Mohammad-Javad Larijani, an international affairs assistant in the Iran's judiciary, disclosed in Farsi-language remarks broadcast on Iran's state-controlled television that Iranian intelligence officials secretly helped provide the al Qaeda attackers with passage and gave them refuge in the Islamic Republic, according to an English translation published by Al Arabiya.

"Our government agreed not to stamp the passports of some of them because they were on transit flights for two hours, and they were resuming their flights without having their passports stamped. However their movements were under the complete supervision of the Iranian intelligence," Larijani was quoted as saying.

The remarks represent the first time senior Iranian officials have publicly admitted to aiding al Qaeda and playing a direct role in facilitating the 9/11 attacks.

The U.S. government has long accused Iran of playing a role in the attacks and even fined the Islamic Republic billions as a result. The U.S. 9/11 Commission assembled to investigate the attacks concluded that Iran played a role in facilitating the al Qaeda terrorists. (h/t jzaik)

'Hamas failed twice'

Kamil Abu-Rukun, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), said on Friday that Hamas had failed in its attempts to enflame the Gaza border area.

"Hamas failed twice - once because it invested money in terror instead of taking care of the needs of the population and again because the Gazans did not join the march,” he said.

"The time has come to say it: Hamas failed in everything related to the so-called 'March of Return.' In recent months, Hamas leaders have promised a mass crossing of the border fence, but this has not happened,” added Abu-Rukun.

Earlier on Friday, Abu-Rukun addressed Gaza residents directly via the Arabic-language page of COGAT, noting that the Hamas terror organization is exploiting and endangering them by encouraging them to take part in the violent border riots.

"The Hamas terrorist organization leads the march and sends you towards the border fence, thus endangering your lives, while its leaders are in a safe place following the events from a distance. Gaza residents - think for yourselves and do not blindly follow a leadership that takes advantage of you!” he wrote.